"Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd…"

Results tagged ‘ Glove trick ’

After surviving yesterday I figured I’d come back for more. I actually didn’t have a ticket for this game but yesterday while I was waiting on friends to arrive I was complaining about how I didn’t have a ticket to Saturday’s game and I also mentioned my charity. If you want to read about my charity all you have to do is click here. Anyway. So as I was complaining a nice guy at the front of the line told me he is a season ticket holder, and he had an extra ticket for tomorrows game. I quickly asked him what he wanted for it and we agreed on $20 dollars. That’s a bargain price considering it was a premium game and all the cheap seats were sold out. Without hesitation I took the deal.

Twenty minutes before the gates opened this is the size of the crowd.

Once inside, everyone of course, was crammed onto the party deck. Toss-ups were out of the question so I immediatly left and took my spot at the stairs near the bullpen and patiently waited another 20 minutes to be allowed into the rest of the stadium. The only highlight I have to report is that Brandon League tried to hook up a fan that was calling for a baseball but missed it. I don’t know how he missed it. It was thrown right to him. If it weren’t for the huge hoards of people trying to inch their way passed everyone in line I would have stepped out of line and made the catch. But instead the guy wiffed it, and the ball ended up hitting some little girl in the side that was in front of me. She, of course, started crying. I’m not sure she was actually hurt or it just caught her off guard. And then all of a sudden some lady standing by said, “You know what? She should get that baseball.” I have mixed feelings about these kinds of situations. That’s all I’m going to say.

5:10pm. The stairs were opened up and it was a rat race for the best spot in the stadium to catch a baseball. I knew standing on the baselines wasn’t going to work for me. Even if a foul ball was hit directly to me it would be hard to catch because so many hands, kids, gloves and whatever else would be going for it. So I wandered the rows for a little while looking for any overlooked baseballs, and then I took a comfy spot behind the manual scoreboard. If anything, I’d be able to glove trick a baseball out of there if someone were to drop a toss-up or boot a catch. And it wasn’t long before that happened. A baseball came in and a fan reached out to make the catch and dropped it. Unfortunatly, the baseball landed here.

Sorry for the blurriness. That baseball was nearly impossible to get. But I did have a backup plan to get it. I’d just wait until the scorekeeper came out and I’d ask them for it. I could have tried to get it but I didn’t want to risk it falling down underneath the scoreboard. Where the ball is sitting there is a small gap where the baseballs can fit and they fall down onto some walkway.

As I was taking pictures and trying to formulate a plan to get that baseball I looked further down behind the scoreboard and I spotted another baseball. It wasn’t there before. Someone must have dropped it. I assembled my glove trick, and then arrogantly asked any other fans if they were going to attempt to get the baseball. Everyone sort of laughed, and I shrugged my shoulders and asked a fan near me if he minded that I tried. He laughed again, and asked, “Will you get kicked out if you jump down there?” It was my turn to laugh…

The baseball was positioned right at the end of that long board laying on the floor. If you didn’t read about my glove trick incident at my last game attended, you should. Click here. Today I had a new and improved glove trick. No more of this easily breakable shoe string. I had boidegradable twine! Yes folks. That’s right. Twine. It doesn’t bind up, he doesn’t knot up, and it’s strong as an ox!

Once the Phillies came onto the field I tried really hard to get Cliff Lee to toss me a baseball. Unfortunatly, when he did, a crowd of teenaged kids were in front of me and when the baseball came close enough for me to catch it, it was easily deflected off of someones’ glove. The ball fell down into the bullpen where a cop scooped it up and tossed it to the nearest kid. Boo! And remember the baseball that was sitting behind the scoreboard? Yeah, it was still there. But now I had competition. A young kid came down to wait on the ball too. Fortunatly for him, he had tickets to be seated in the left field bleachers. I didn’t. So as soon as BP ended the security guards began their search to find people without tickets that were sitting in their sections. I had limited time. And then I finally gave up on the ball. The left field seats filled up fast, I was without a ticket, and securiy was extra tight. So I let the kid have the ball. I’m not sure if he got it or not but as I left the area five minutes before the game I saw the scorekeeper behind the scoreboard. Here’s a picture of the kid waiting on the ball. Kudos to him for having patience of steel.

And here is a picture of how crowded the ‘Pen area got.

The game was awesome though. Even though the Mariners lost 5-1, Dustin Ackley hit his first Major League home run. Which was pretty cool to see. So congratulations to Dustin on his first career jack. I also saw him hit his first Major League hit the day prior.

Inter-league play. Always my favorite time of the year during baseball season. NOT. I’ve never been a fan of inter-league play. For a bunch of reasons. But for baseball it’s probably something that will never go away. Now they’re talking about moving divisions around, making the playoffs longer and all this other hoopla. Truth of the matter is, it’s all about money. Did you know that this weekend alone brought out 1.6 million fans across baseball to watch inter-league baseball? Crazy, huh? Some series I’d love to see though. Like the Subway series, the Battle of the Bay (which I’ve already seen this year) and the I-70 series. Other than that? I really don’t care to see the Indians play the Astros. It’s not something I have my heart set on.

This morning I had a photo-shoot with a guy from the Snohomish Tribune. I had to take all of my 170 plus baseballs down to my old high school and have me and them photographed together on the baseball field. It was kind of cool because that’s the very same field Adam Eaton played on in high school. He graduated in 1996 from Snohomish High school, which was my sophomore year. If you aren’t familiar with who Adam Eaton is well I will tell you. He graduated Snohomish High school in 97` posting an 0.67 ERA for the team and went on to play college ball for the University of Washington. He was drafted by the Phillies in the 96` draft but ended up making his Major League debut for the San Diego Padres, May 30th 2000. He played with them until the 2005 season when he was traded to the Texas Rangers. From there he bounced to the Phillies, Orioles, and the Rockies before finally becoming a free agent. A lot of Phillies fan speculate that Eaton almost cost them the World Series in 2008 and didn’t deserve a World Series ring.

Here are a few pictures of Doug trying to figure out a good shot for all my baseballs.

And here is Doug trying to set up all of my baseballs for a good picture. He was explaining how he wanted to leave all the baseballs in the original pyramid formation but block out the yellow box lid and the other brown colored box lid.

…and here’s a picture of him setting up my special baseballs. You know, like the one I caught from Mark McGwire, my 100th lifetime and my first ever baseball.

I don’t know if I’ll keep my Mark McGwire ball in the cube like that forever. Eventually, as I collect more baseballs from iconic players I may just put them in a special box or a multiple baseball holder and label each ball with the specific players that either hit it or tossed it to me. In any case I doubt I will ever get another baseball from Mark McGwire ever again. And I surely won’t ever get one hit to me by him. So it makes it very special that I got one from him. And if you want to read about how I got one from Big Mac you can just click right here.

After the photo-shoot was complete, I loaded all my baseballs up in my car, jetted home, unloaded all of my baseballs back upstairs, grabbed my stuff, and chased off towards Safeco Field. Since the Phillies were in town for inter-league play I had to get to the stadium early. Plus it was Ichiro replica jersey giveaway night. So the stadium was going to be packed. I was also waiting on my buddy Josh and his small entourage to arrive with the tickets. The gates opened up at 4:40pm and they arrived at 4:38pm. Moments to spare. (I truly appreciate the hustle, Josh!) Once I got my ticket, got my bag checked by security, I raced inside to the center field party deck. The place filled up so fast. Before I knew it I was elbow to elbow with hundreds of people. And to make matters worse David Aardsma tossed some dude a baseball, it bounced out of his hands, smacked off his face, bounced off the shoulder of his wife, and landed down in the gap behind the centerfield wall. Now I had to compete for a spot to get that baseball. I probably excused myself a hundred times trying to get in line with it to glove trick it out of there. Once I found it I got my glove ready, and started to lower it down. Just then…my string broke. My glove fell helplessly into the gap. “Now what?” Said a voice.

I found the nearest security guard and told him I had dropped my baseball glove into the gap. He told me he couldn’t help me right now because he was too busy guarding his post. I’d have to wait. And I did wait. Even though the outside temperature was only 71 degrees, it felt like I was roasting under a desert sun. I was literally stressed out. I wanted to just forget my glove and go home. But I’ve had that glove since I was like, 16. And I still had a chance to get that baseball. After 25 minutes of standing there, and making minimal, pathetic attends to get a baseball players attention to toss me a baseball, I caught up with a security guard that was way more friendlier and way better looking too. Her name is Kim, and she is always so helpful and nice at the stadium. I told her my problem but I added that I was trying to get an autograph and I dropped my glove, my ball, and my sharpie into the gap. She immediately started towards the gate to help me but her supervisor, Melinda,(an equally nice security guard) cut her off and told her she had to go guard something else. I then had to explain my problem to Melinda. And she was equally compassionate and understanding. So can you guess what happened next?

Isn’t that the best picture ever? That’s not the actual baseball from the gap. That is a baseball I brought from home for good luck. And in case you’re still waiting on official confirmation that I got the baseball from the gap, yes. I did get it. Melinda brought it up for me. I couldn’t thank her enough.

I was finally able to assist my buddy Josh in the left field bleachers but he pretty much had things under control. I was just hanging around in case he missed one, plus he’s great conversation. We jib-jab about baseball, and who we think will make the playoffs…you know, guy talk. Josh reeled in four baseballs in this one spot in the bleachers, and got Jaime Navarro to toss him his fifth.

That’s Josh waiting for another BP home run. If you want to check out his stats on www.mygameballs.com just click here. He’s a really cool guy and we got kind of ran out of that spot earlier than we wanted because after Josh had snagged number four a lot of kids started asking him to stand there.

Like I said. The stadium was absolutely crowded. Full to the brim. No where to stand and nowhere to really run for anything. Here are a couple of pictures to show you just how crowded it got.

The front rows were packed. There was no breaking in to get close enough for a toss-up so I just chalked it up as a loss and let inter-league play win this round. I felt that coming away with one baseball was pretty significant especially considering I lost valuable time when I dropped my glove in the gap. Here’s the severity of that incident too. You see…while I was standing there dinking around with security…another 35,000 people entered the baseball stadium in that time frame.

Batting practice ended and the only thing left to do was to get close enough to Kyle Kendrick to get some pictures. He had a ton of family at the ballpark, (he’s from Mount Vernon, WA) so everyone was trying to see him, and he was doing his best to obligue everyones’ requests for autographs and pictures. I helped out Josh get his picture with Kendrick and that was pretty much the end of all the excitement.

My seats were awesome. Right on the aisle in foul ball territory. Josh’s girlfriend, Ginny has a friend that hooked us all up with these great seats from her work. And sitting here nearly paid off too. It was around the 5th inning when a foul ball was hit our direction. I stood up, made my way down the aisle carefully, and moved into position to catch the ball. I was worried that it was going to hit the cable that strung along above us to help support the screen behind home plate so I adjusted a few feet to my right. Unfortunatly, the beer vendor was ducking for cover right where I needed to be. The ball landed two seats in and I was on the other side of the beer vendor. Had he not of been there? Easy catch.

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My MLBlog centered on the Miami Marlins, serving up all the latest news and analysis, triumphs and perils of the team. Steve Miller is a lifelong Marlins fan from Fredericksburg, Virginia, who frequents Nationals Park. Follow him through this blog as he chronicles the Marlins as well as his personal baseball experiences.

Thought processes and conversations started under the tilted cap of Tropicana Field. Someday everyone will know the Rays play in St. Petersburg, Florida, not TAMPA, or the fictitious city of TAMPA BAY.